Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/198

 184 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S emperor." ^^ University -bred jurists, even such as came from an oldish school, were very serviceable to King Henry in the days of the great divorce case and the subsequent quarrel with the papacy. Tunstall, Gardiner, Bonner, Sampson and Clerk, to say nothing of the Leghs and Laytons, were doc- tors of law and took their fees in bishoprics and deaneries.^' Certainly they were more conspicuous and probably they ^^ Foreign Calendar, 1558-9, p. 8. This seems to mean that the normal and rightful relation of church to state is that which is to be discovered in Justinian's books. If so, " the Protestants of Scotland " soon after- wards changed their opinions under the teaching of Geneva and claimed for " the estate ecclesiastical " a truly medieval independence. " The following facts are taken from the Dictionary of National Biog- raphy. Cuthbert Tunstall (afterwards bishop of Durham) " gradu- ated LL. D. at Padua." Stephen Gardiner (afterwards bishop of Win- chester) of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, "proceeded doctor of the civil law in 1520 and of the canon law in the following year. ... In 1524 he was appointed one of Sir Robert Rede's lecturers in the University." Edmund Bonner of Broadgate Hall, Oxford, " in 1519 he took on two successive days (12 and 13 June) the degrees of bachelor of civil and of canon law. . . . On 12 July, 1525, he was admitted doctor of civil law." Thomas Thirlby (afterwards bishop of Ely) of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, " graduated bachelor of the civil law in 1521 . . . and pro- ceeded doctor of the civil law in 1528 and doctor of the canon law in 1530." Richard Sampson (afterwards bishop of Lichfield) of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, " proceeded B. C. L. in 1505. Then he went for six years to Paris and Sens and returning proceeded D. C. L. in 1513." John Clerk (afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells, Master of the Rolls), " B. A. of Cambridge 1499 and M. A. 1502, studied law and received the doctor's degree at Bologna." Richard Layton (afterwards dean of York) " was educated at Cambridge, where he proceeded B. C. L. in 1522 and afterwards LL. D." Thomas Legh of King's College (?), Cambridge, " proceeded B. C. L. in 1527 and D. C. L. in 1531." Instances of legal degrees obtained in foreign universities are not very uncommon. John Taylor, Master of the Rolls in 1527, "graduated doctor of law at some foreign university, being incorporated at Cambridge in 1520 and at Oxford in 1522." James Denton, dean of Lichfield, proceeded B. A. in 1489 and M. A. in 1492 at Cambridge. " He subsequently studied canon law at Valencia in which faculty he became a doctor of the university there." (For an earlier instance, that of Thomas Alcock of Bologna, see Grace Book A, Luard Memorial, p. 209. There are other instances in Boase, Register of the University of Oxford; consult index under Padua, Bologna, Paris, Orleans, Bourges, Louvain.) That wonderful divorce cause, which shook the world, created a large demand for the sort of knowledge that the university-bred jurist was supposed to possess, especially as a great effort was made to obtain from foreign doctors and universities opinions favourable to the king. The famous Cambridge " Grecian " Richard Croke was employed in ransacking Italian libraries for the works of Greek theologians and in taking counsel with Hebrew rabbis. In Italy, France and Spain, as well as in England, almost every canonist of distinction, from the cele- brated Philip Decius downwards, must have made a little money out of that law suit, for the emperor also wanted opinions.